15th Affair

by James Patterson

  “We had to get those tiny terrified, traumatized kids into the building, make sure they didn’t need emergency care. We got their names. Gave them water. Then we tried to match the kids’ names to the list of parents storming the barricades.

  “When we had a match, Highway Patrol would call out the name over a megaphone. Rich and I would escort these five-year-olds outside into this freakin’ mob scene of moms and dads screaming at the child, ‘Do you know my daughter? Did you see my little boy?’

  “We had all of the one-at-a-time parent-and-child reunions. Oh, my God, Claire. Each and every time a scraped-up little kid with ripped clothes broke away from me and started running toward loving arms, I thought my heart was going to blow through my chest.”

  I had to stop speaking. Claire reached across her desk and grabbed my hand.

  I said, “I kept thinking about Julie. How can I protect my own daughter when the world is like this?”

  There was a long silence as we pondered the imponderable. Then Claire asked me, “Any word from Joe?”

  I shook my head.

  “What the fuck has happened to him? How could he not call me? He has to have a good reason, right, Claire? I have to trust that he would call me if he could. But what if he’s hurt? Or dead? No one is going to look for my missing husband in the thick of all this.”

  Claire murmured comforting words. “He’s OK. He has a reason, sure. He’ll call soon.”

  I looked up at my friend through the tears in my eyes. “I have to get home,” I said. “You haven’t said why you called.”

  Claire said, “Right.” She opened a file drawer, took out a small sheaf of paper, and put it down on the desk facing me.

  “This is the passenger manifest,” she said. “I’m looking, you know, to see if I can find the name of that little boy and maybe three people I’ve got here who still had wallets in their pockets. And I see this name, Michael Chan. I’m thinking, there’s probably a lot of people named Michael Chan.”

  I stared at Claire, and I really didn’t understand what she was saying. Michael Chan had been chilling in this morgue since he was murdered in the Four Seasons Hotel three days ago.

  But Claire was saying something different. She was tapping the passenger list where a name had been highlighted in yellow.

  “Look at this, Linds,” she said. “Chan. Michael. Professorville, Palo Alto. This is your victim from the hotel shooting, am I right? He couldn’t have been on that plane. He’s here—in a drawer with his name and number on a toe tag. I double- and triple-checked. It’s him.”

  My mouth was open. I tried to clear the smoke from my head and absorb the highlighted name on the passenger list. Who was this Michael Chan? Our dead man had been identified by his widow. Even with two shots in his face, he was a match for his DMV picture.

  Claire’s incredulity mirrored mine.

  “Where is this Michael Chan right now?” I asked, stabbing the highlighted name.

  “Metropolitan Hospital,” she said. “He was sent to Metro’s morgue.”

  CHAPTER 29

  METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL IS a huge general hospital with a lab and morgue that occupies the entire basement level.

  At 6:30 p.m., Metropolitan’s parking lot was nearly impassable. Claire carefully maneuvered her car up and down the aisles of hastily parked vehicles. There were no open spots, not for cops or doctors or patients. Meanwhile, Metro’s overextended director of pathology was waiting for us inside.

  Claire said, “I’ll call Dr. Marshall, let her know what’s happened to us.”

  She took out her phone and I used the moment to call Mrs. Rose—only to find that my phone battery was dead and that I’d left my charger in the squad car.

  Claire was saying, “Fine. We’ll park on Valencia. Blue Chevy Tahoe.”

  We left the hospital lot, parked on Valencia in the no parking zone in front of an auto repair shop. We didn’t have to wait long. A fantastically fit glossy-haired woman wearing a green leather coat over bloody blue scrubs knocked on Claire’s window.

  We got out and I was introduced to Dr. Pamela Marshall. Right after that, we had an ad hoc meeting across the hood of Claire’s car.

  “Busy night,” Marshall said, “following the most hellacious day ever.”

  “I’ll second that,” Claire said. “Look. We just want to walk back to the morgue with you, get a quick look at Mr. Chan, and get out of your way.”

  “Here’s the thing, Dr. Washburn,” said Marshall. “We’ve got sixty bodies and counting. I’ve got Jane and John Does in double digits. You’re lucky Mr. Chan had ID. I gotta be honest with you, I wish I had known and saved you the trip. I couldn’t show you Chan’s body right now if you offered me a million bucks and a house in Cannes.”

  “Wish you’d known what?” asked Claire.

  “Chan was in line to be autopsied,” Marshall said, “but someone moved his gurney somewhere. He’s been temporarily misplaced.”

  I said “Dr. Marshall. You’re saying you lost Chan?”

  “Misplaced. He’ll turn up. Don’t worry about that, and I’ll call you when he does. I’ve got to get back,” she said. “I’ll call you. Good night, ladies.”

  “Wait,” I called after her. “I need to see his ID.”

  Dr. Marshall kept walking.

  Claire said, “If she doesn’t have his body, she doesn’t have his ID, either. His personal effects would be on his person.”

  I didn’t want to believe this. Chan’s body and his ID had been misplaced? Was this for real?

  “I don’t like this,” I said to Claire.

  “Lindsay, nothing makes sense today. Go home. Marshall will call us in the morning.”

  Yeah? What if she doesn’t?

  CHAPTER 30

  ALI MULLER PARKED her rented Lexus on Waverley Street in the Professorville section of Palo Alto. It was early morning and the lights were on in the sage-green house with the name Chan on the mailbox.

  Ali fluffed her bangs, reapplied her lipstick, and put her makeup kit away. She took another moment to admire the cute house, the beagle digging in the flower beds, the trike on the walkway, lacy curtains in the windows. It was the very picture of a middle-class home in a middle-class neighborhood.

  The American ideal.

  She looked for security cameras on the Chan house and the ones across the street. When she was sure there were no cameras, no eyes, no traffic passing by, she got out of the car and locked it up.

  Instead of going to the front door, she went to the side of the house and opened the little chain-link gate between the wall and the tall boundary-line hedge. As she expected, there was a short flight of stairs leading up to a door with panes from top to midpoint.

  Ali walked up the steps and peered through the glass. Shirley Chan was unloading the dishwasher, putting dishes away. One of the children was sitting at the table in the breakfast nook eating cereal. It was the younger one, a girl.

  Ali turned the doorknob and gave the door a little shove. It opened and she stepped inside.

  Shirley Chan looked up, startled, trying to put it together.

  Why was this woman in her house?

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you a reporter? Because you have a lot of nerve. Get out of here now. Or I’ll call the police.”

  “Shirley, don’t worry, I’m not with the press. I swear.”

  “What is it? What do you want?”

  “Calm down, please, please. I’m Ali Muller. I knew your husband, and I’m so sorry to hear about his death. We were working on a project together. Michael may have spoken of me. He told me that if anything ever happened to him, to give you this letter.”

  Shirley Chan told her daughter to go get dressed. The little girl complained that the dog was still outside and Shirley said, “I’ll bring him in in a minute. Now, scoot.”

  “Have a seat,” she said to the composed and well-dressed woman in her kitchen. “I only have a few minutes, but tell me how you like your coffee, and please—let me have
that letter.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Ali Muller. She put her bag on the floor and bent to open the closure.

  Shirley went to the coffeemaker. “How do you like your coffee?” she asked again.

  “With a splash of milk, if you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t mind at all,” Shirley said.

  She poured coffee into two blue earthenware mugs, filled the creamer with milk, and said to Ali Muller, “The police tell me you were the last person to see my husband alive. Is that true?”

  She turned to look at the woman sitting at her table.

  Ali Muller had the gun in her hand. She aimed. She fired. The bullets were silenced by the suppressor, making only two soft sounds, pffft-pffft, piercing Shirley Chan’s forehead.

  Michael Chan’s widow fell dead to the kitchen floor.

  CHAPTER 31

  I GOT HOME as the Late Late Show was starting. Martha barreled toward me and Mrs. Rose swung her feet down off the sofa. While she searched for her shoes and straightened her clothes, she said, “Lindsay, the baby’s fine. Joe stopped by.”

  “Joe was here? When?”

  Mrs. Rose said, “He left an hour ago. He said that he got pulled into the crash investigation full-time and he doesn’t know when he’ll be home again.”

  Mrs. Rose took a breath, put on her shoes, then continued. “He said to tell you he’s sorry he hasn’t called.”

  “Was he okay?”

  “He looked tired. I gave him a beer and he sat with Julie for maybe ten minutes. Then he changed his clothes and left. He said he had to get back. He was in a big hurry, Lindsay.”

  “Did he say he was going to call later?”

  Mrs. Rose said, “I’m sure he will. Of course, he will.”

  I was still in stunned disbelief when Mrs. Rose said good night to me at the door.

  I hardly slept.

  My mind had writhed all night with all-too-realistic images of crash victims and other unsolved mysteries from both the job and personal fronts.

  I was at my desk in the squad room at eight and ready to ambush Brady when he came through the gate an hour later. He waved me into his office and gave me the welcome news that Homicide was off airliner crash duty—the Feds were in charge—and we were back to solving homicides.

  The Four Seasons murders in particular.

  He said, “Yesterday morning we were talking about Joe. Have you seen him?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. According to our nanny, he came home last night while I was still working. He changed his clothes, and he left me a phone message saying he’d been swept into the WW 888 investigation. That he was up to his eyebrows in it.”

  Brady threw me a skeptical look.

  “He’s an airport security consultant,” I said emphatically. “Formerly with Homeland Security.”

  “I know that.”

  “Listen, Brady, he’s not a fugitive. He will contact me again. And right now, we’ve got a new, very weird angle on the Michael Chan murder.”

  I had Brady’s attention on Michael Chan, version 2.0.

  I said, “Metropolitan’s head pathologist has misplaced this Michael Chan’s body. She could find him later today or sometime next week. She said she’d call when his body turns up. So I called Shirley Chan a little while ago. There was no answer at home or at her office, but I’ll try again. I want to talk to her again. Find out more about her marriage. Their financial situation. Anything odd about his behavior. She was in no condition to answer—”

  “Go,” Brady said. “Go now.”

  Thirty miles and forty minutes later, Conklin and I pulled up to the green house on Waverley. The old one-and-a-half story house was set squarely on its lot, everything neat except for the trike on the walk and a beagle-dachshund mix lying across the front steps. When the dog heard our car doors close, he got to his feet and set up a howl.

  “Dogs love me,” I said. “Watch.”

  I walked up to the dog, saying, “Hi, buddy,” and put out the flat of my hand. He wagged his tail, backed up, walked up to the door, and lifted his head toward the knob.

  Conklin joined us. He pressed the doorbell. I knocked and called out, “Shirley? Anyone home?”

  We were turning to go back down the walk when the lock clattered, the doorknob turned, and a little boy wearing pajama bottoms stood inside the doorway. I remembered the child’s name.

  “Brett? I’m Sergeant Boxer. I met you a couple of days ago. Do you remember me?”

  He looked up at us and burst into tears.

  I pushed the door open. The boy’s PJs were wet and his footprints on the wooden floor from the kitchen to the front door were red.

  His hands and feet, his chest, and the sides of his face were red.

  Brett Chan was covered with blood.

  CHAPTER 32

  “GIVE ME YOUR hand,” I said to the little boy. I remembered Shirley Chan telling me that Brett was seven. He was small for his age. Dark hair, his glasses askew, tears sheeting down his cheeks.

  He held out his hand, which looked rusty with dry blood.

  I grabbed his little wrist to pull him outside the house, closed the door, dropped to a crouch, and looked him over.

  “Where do you hurt?” I asked him. He cried—bawled, actually—but I saw no injuries. The blood wasn’t his.

  “Who’s inside the house?”

  “My mom. And Haley.”

  “No one else?” I asked. “Are they hurt?”

  The little boy just sobbed.

  Had the perp or perps fled? Or had Shirley Chan gone mad, shot up the place, including her daughter and herself? Had Brett been sent to the door under a threat: Don’t say anything or I’ll kill you?

  Conklin said, “Brett? Let’s go out to our police car, OK, buddy? I’m going to call for more police. I need you to stay in the front seat and listen to the police band for us. OK?”

  Brett Chan nodded.

  Conklin put his hand on the boy’s small back and walked him twenty feet out to our unmarked. I saw my partner talking into the mic, locking up the car, getting a couple of vests out of the trunk, then coming back up to the front steps.

  “Local PD is on the way,” he said. “We can’t wait.”

  Brett Chan was covered in blood. He might be the last living member of his family, or someone inside could be bleeding out right now. No one would blame us if we waited for backup before going into a hot situation, but my partner and I would blame ourselves if someone died because we were too late.

  We got our vests on and our guns in our hands, and I shouted at the doorway, “This is the police! We’re coming in.”

  Then I nodded to Conklin and he kicked open the door.

  The foyer and front room floors were crisscrossed with bloody footprints. Conklin took a right toward the bedrooms and I followed the tracks to the left.

  As I approached the kitchen, the hair at the back of my neck lifted like I’d been brushed by cold, dead fingers. What would I find at the intersection of all those small footprints? Was I walking into a room where a shooter had his gun braced and was ready to fire again?

  I hugged the doorway, and with gun extended, I peered into the kitchen.

  Shirley Chan was lying faceup on the floor between the counter and the refrigerator, her blood forming a wide red halo around her head. I stooped beside her and felt for a pulse that I knew I wouldn’t find. Her skin was still warm, and the smell of gunpowder lingered in the air.

  I looked around. There was no brass on the floor and no sign of forced entry through the kitchen door. A bowl of milky Cheerios was on the table. A broken coffee mug and a puddle of coffee were at my feet, and a matching blue earthenware mug was on the counter near the coffeemaker.

  I saw how this had gone down. Shirley Chan had been making coffee for another person. Maybe she’d turned to say something when she was shot through her forehead. This was no suicide, no accident, no holdup gone wrong. No shots had been wasted. Mrs. Chan had been killed by a pro.

  I he
ard Conklin saying, “You’re OK now, Haley. Let’s go find Brett, OK?”

  I left the kitchen and shook my head, indicating to my partner, Do not take her in there. I lifted my arms and Conklin handed Haley to me, saying, “You were in the closet, weren’t you, sweetie?”

  “Haley,” I said as Conklin checked out the scene in the kitchen. “I’m a police officer. Did you see someone in the house this morning? Someone who didn’t belong here?”

  I took my phone from my pocket, pulled up a photo of Ali Muller, and showed it to the five-year-old.

  “Haley? Do you know this woman? Have you seen her?”

  The child tightened her hold on me and sobbed hot tears into the crook between my neck and shoulder. Poor little girl.

  What was her life going to be like now?

  CHAPTER 33

  FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER we’d parked in front of the Chan house, our car was hemmed in by cops, CSI, an ambulance, and the coroner’s van.

  Six CSIs were processing the scene inside the house as Conklin and I met with Lieutenant Todd Traina of the Palo Alto Police Department.

  Of course, Conklin and I wanted to work this crime. Not only had we been first on the scene, but we were also involved with Shirley, her murdered husband, and the mysterious wrinkle of a second dead Michael Chan, killed in the crash of WW 888.

  Bottom line, we were thoroughly briefed and highly motivated.

  But this hideous crime had happened in Palo Alto, not our turf. The best we could hope for was a free exchange of information between our department and the Palo Alto PD.

  Conklin, Lieutenant Traina, and I stood under a tree on the parched grass between the sidewalk and the street, and we told the lieutenant how we’d happened upon a fresh murder scene in Professorville.